AB Community Plan Public Letter
Allston-Brighton Housing Action represents a diverse group of residents who support increasing the supply of housing in our neighborhood as well as improvements to safe mobility. We share a commitment to the future of Allston Brighton as an affordable, safe, resilient, and welcoming community.
We are enthusiastic about the Allston Brighton community planning process, and we thank the team for its work. We would like to express our concerns and our hopes in this letter, which fall into the three following categories.
We would like to have an opportunity to discuss these concerns more with the planning team.
Create clustered districts AND allow more capacity for housing and small businesses across our neighborhood
We have a major concern that the two scenarios presented last fall and in the community survey appeared to be an either/or choice between clustered development of certain districts with little change elsewhere, OR more widespread moderate increases in allowed housing units to allow easier access to services and destinations.
Our vision sees both of those as desirable outcomes, and we believe they would work best together. We need more housing and a more diversified housing stock across our community to start to alleviate the housing cost crisis and keep people in our neighborhood. A stable and growing population would also help our existing businesses and encourage new ones to open. At the same time, allowing clusters of higher apartment buildings atop and alongside denser business districts would encourage both day and nightlife in those areas and lead to new growth opportunities.
We also request that the data from the survey and other comments regarding the two scenarios be publicly released.
Squares+Streets Districts
We welcome the Squares+Streets (S+S) zoning initiative to our community and think it will be very helpful in implementing the vision above. We would like to see the S+S districts cover all our major corridors, and that the corridors be considered together, rather than as a set of separate S+S planning districts.
Support and implement existing mobility plans
We support the continued implementation of the existing Allston Brighton Mobility Plan, the Route 57 Transit Priority Project, and the Western Avenue Transitway. These have all gone through extensive community meetings and feedback, and do not require further study.
Conclusion
Much of our neighborhood in Allston Brighton was built to accommodate the needs of newcomers a century ago. We need to build a neighborhood that accommodates the needs of people here today and in the coming century.
We look forward to speaking with the AB Community Plan team.